Drama student and theatre blogger. I fell over on my first day of secondary school because life isn't always fair.

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Monthly Archives: November 2016

I am a drama student in London, and that’s really cool. London is undoubtedly one of the best theatre cities in the world, which is obviously incredibly exciting for someone like me.

However.

London theatre is expensive.

Ask anyone who knows me though, and they will tell you that I go quite a lot. As a result of this, people tend to assume that I must have a lot of money, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. (I just know a lot of tricks.)

Theatre in London can be accessible enough, you just have to know where to look. I have therefore decided that I should write a blog post about it: because there’s bound to be someone out there who will benefit from it, right?

In this blog post, I will list some cool and nifty ways I managed to get some really cheap seats to a London show. I hope you enjoy!

1. Compare Theatre Tickets:

comparetheatretickets.com is an amazing website, with such a simple concept. It is basically the London theatre version of Travel Supermarket. You simply select the show you would like to see and the date you want to see it on, and the website will compare dozens of different ticket sites to find the best deal for you.

On a purely personal note, I have found the site From The Box Office to be an amazing resource, which I discovered through Compare Theatre Tickets. Not only have I found some amazingly cheap seats here, it also gives me the added benefit of being able to simply pick my purchased tickets up at the box office prior to the performance.

2. Day Seating.

No “Go to the theatre for cheap” list would be complete without mentioning day-seating. For those of you who are unaware, day-seating is essentially when you turn up to the box office on the day that you would like to see the performance and wait for it to open so you can purchase those glorious admission slips.

For example, if you are between the ages of 16-25, you can get a £5 ticket to Matilda on the day of the performance. As the box office is opened at 10 am each morning, most people get to the theatre for around 8. Although it is a wait, it’s actually quite fun when you’re with a group of people who share your excitement for the show. Different shows have different policies though, so make sure to do your preparation in advance.

Loving life with my £5 Matilda ticket.

TheatreMonkey is a great resource for this. The site has information on every single West End show and their policy on day seating. Not only that, but there are also personal reviews on the site and hints and tips on how to nab a good seat.

TodayTix

TodayTix is a mobile app that you can buy fairly inexpensive tickets on. The best thing about it though, is that you can enter numerous lotteries for free. At the moment of writing, lotteries are available for Kinky Boots, The Bodyguard, Lazurus, No Man’s Land and The Entertainer. If you win, you pay between £15-£20 per ticket for the front row of the stalls, which is truly an amazing deal.

As well as that, there are also a number of shows offering rush tickets. Every morning, on the day of a performance, the app will release rush tickets for the first few couple of rows. The prices start at £20 for these seats (currently Oil, Ragtime, The Tempest) and £25. (Charlie And The Chocolate Factory.)

Pro-tip: Make sure to share your entry on your social media accounts and get your friends to do the same! If you do this, you will get another entry. As I always share on my Twitter and Facebook, I stand a bit more of a chance.

Lotteries:

If you aren’t in it , you can’t win it.

Some shows are just too popular, and so producers have decided to set up their own lotteries. Although much more of a phenomenon in New York, lotteries are starting to pick up steam in London, too.

The Book of Mormon, a musical which still dominates the West End, is one show that offers a lottery. To enter, simply show up to the theatre before the performance and pop your name and details onto a lottery slip. Two hours before the performance, 21 names will be drawn and you will have the option to purchase either one or two tickets for the front row of the stalls for only £20 each.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a play which is embracing the lottery system, too. Every Friday, forty tickets are released to the general public for both parts of the play. Winners can book up to two tickets for £20 per part, and the seats are among the best in the theatre. The chances of winning for this show are low, but you just never know- miracles do happen.

It was also recently announced by Cameron Mackintosh, the producer of the London production of the hit musical Hamilton, that a lottery system will be put in place for the show when it opens next year. SCREAMING.

National Theatre Entry Pass:

Seeing shows at the National Theatre is truly a humbling experience, so if you’re between the ages of 16-25, make sure to sign up for Entry Pass. The scheme, which is completely free, offer £5 tickets to members, and allow them to take a friend for just £7.50. When you collect your tickets at the box office, simply bring your ID to prove your age and voila, you’ve now scored a ticket to a show in a theatre that many consider to be the pinnacle of British theatre.

Young Barbican,The Royal Court, The Royal Opera House, and the RSC are some other companies who offer ridiculously cheap theatre tickets to students and young people. I was originally surprised at the amount of offers available to students from institutions like these, but remember- they see it as an investment. I am more than happy to partake in it.

Prompt:

Prompt is a great new site that not a lot of people know about. Every day, between 12 and 3, tickets for a number of West End shows go on sale to students, starting at just £16. This is bad news for people who aren’t in education, but honestly, we need the discounts.

Previews:

Previews is the time allotted to a show before its official opening, when it is first tested out on an audience. Tickets for these performances will always be cheaper, so make sure to enquire at the theatre box office/ through their website and social media accounts.

Mousetrap:

Mousetrap is an amazing theatre education charity that was set up with the sole intention of bringing theatre into the lives of disadvantaged young people. The site is free to sign up to, and once you have done so, you are entitled to £10 tickets (if you are between the ages of 19 & 23) or £5 tickets (between the ages of 15 & 18.) A great thing about the scheme is that there are often post-show talks with the cast and creative team, which really is priceless.

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My theatre tips:

When you go to the theatre for the show itself, go to the box office and ask if any seats have become available in a better area of the theatre. If it is not a busy night,particularly on a Monday/Tuesday, the box office staff will upgrade your seat free of charge, no questions asked. I recently paid £10 to see Michael Crawford in The Go Between and I ended up being moved to the fifth row of the stalls for free. Why? Because the theatre wants to give off the impression that the show is selling well. As a result, they would much rather have all audience members in one section of the theatre.

Be a box office whore. I turned up to the Cambridge Theatre an hour before a Wednesday matinee of Matilda and managed to get 2nd row stall seats for £30 each. To some, this might still seem expensive, but when you consider that the audience members sitting beside me paid in/around £125, you realise it’s worth it. If you are nice to the box office staff, they will be nice to you.

Use SeatPlan. The site will help you locate the seat you are about to buy and let you read reviews and see the view from the seat. It really is so useful to see whether or not the price you are about to pay is worth it, and has helped me out before.

Get on social media and follow theatre accounts. Retweet/share/like/ enter every competition, because you probably will win something. Trust me, it works- I won two tickets to see Dudley Dursley in Hand to God, a hilarious play that ran on the West End earlier this year. (It was even funnier because it was free.) Some of my favourites to follow are London Theatre Direct and Stage Faves.

That’s all I can think of for now, but if anything comes to mind, I will make sure to add it to this post.